Clinton Crybaby Bridge

Type
Vehicle bridge over water

Legend
These are two legends associated with this bridge. The most popular version concerns a woman who, for reasons known only to her, decides to try and hide her pregnancy from her fiancé. To help do this, it is said that the woman moved into a small house near the bridge. When the baby was born, the woman delivered it herself, then promptly took it up onto the bridge and threw it in the water.

According to legend, if you go to the bridge at midnight, you are supposed to still hearing the baby crying.

An even stranger version of the story is said to have taken place “during the Civil War”. As the story goes a large group of runaway slaves, including women and children, had made their way into Ohio and were heading for Canada. During their whole trip North, they were followed by several “slave hunters.”

As the runaway slaves neared the Tuscarawas River, they realized they were about to be captured. Rather than have their children be forced to return to a life of slavery, the adults grabbed their children and threw them off the bridge, drowning them all in the process.

Today, if you are lucky enough to be up on the bridge at just the right time, they say you will hear the cries of the slave children as their ghosts are forced to reenact their deaths.

Ritual
None known as of this writing.

Location
While most will tell you the bridge in question is on Cleveland-Massillon Road, it’s technically on Main Street. Traveling south on Cleveland-Massillon Road, you will reach an odd-shaped intersection, at which you can bear to the right onto Hickory Street or else stay to the left onto Main Street. The bridge is on Main Street, a stone’s throw from this intersection. It crosses over the Tuscarawas River.

Notes
While I haven’t been out to this particular bridge in a while, the last few times I visited, there was indeed an old, somewhat spooky-looking abandoned building right next to the bridge. Just a hunch, but if the building’s been in that condition for some time, its looks alone might have resulted in it being incorporated into the version where the woman who killed her newborn lived near the bridge.

As for the version involving the runaway slaves throwing their children off the bridge to drown them, while the bridge crosses the Tuscarawas River, the water is neither deep or side enough at the crossing point, so it seems an odd place to attempt mass murder, even while being pursued by bounty hunters. Of course, this particular version seems rather farfetched even without the water not being deep.

Personal ExperiencesLook, I’m going to be honest with you. I don’t know if the stories about people throwing their babies off the bridge or whatever are true. What I can tell you is one night, a group of us went out there, parked our car near the abandoned house, and walked over to the bridge. I guess it was around 11 at night. We didn’t hear or see anything so we decided to climb down and look under the bridge.

I guess we were under there, just hanging out, for like 15 minutes. Then we heard a single cry, like from a baby. Then, I’m not kidding, we heard something splash in the water on the other side of the bridge. We all heard those noises! We climbed to the other side of the bridge and you could see ripples in the water where something had gone into the water. My buddy wanted to find sticks and see if we could poke out near the ripples. But the rest of us wanted to get the hell out of there.
–Name and location withheld upon request